Conventional transceiver delatching mechanisms, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,901,263 issued May 4, 1999 to Gaio et al; U.S. Pat. No. 6,439,918 issued Aug. 27, 2002 to Togami et al; U.S. Pat. No. 6,789,958 issued Sep. 14, 2004 to Ahrens et al; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,840,680 issued Jan. 11, 2005 to Chiu et al, include a pivoting lever or bail, which when rotated results in a second pivoting element being rotated out of engagement with a host cage or rail system. The bails in the aforementioned devices are rotated through a 90° arc to disengage the latching mechanism, and are therefore prevented from rotating when a fiber optic cable is in position in the optical coupler of the transceiver, because the fiber optic cable will obstruct the cross bar of the bail.
Other transceiver delatching mechanisms with a pivoting lever or bail and a sliding wedge are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,692,159 issued Feb. 17, 2004 to Chiu et al; U.S. Pat. No. 6,744,963 issued Jun. 1, 2004 to Hwang; U.S. Pat. No. 6,840,680 issued Jan. 11, 2005 to Chiu et al; U.S. Pat. No. 6,851,867 issued Feb. 8, 2005 to Pang et al; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,916,123 issued Jul. 12, 2005 to Kruger et al. The sliding wedges in the aforementioned devices are not ideal for small form factor transceivers, since they are relatively large and require a specially designed track system for reciprocating therein.
Another solution for a small form factor delatching mechanism is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,890,206 issued May 10, 2005 to Distad et al, which discloses a single lever mechanism for bending the cage assembly away from transceiver housing, thereby delatching the transceiver's latch from the cage's latch.
“Copper” transceiver's are used as short distance patch cables, typically in datacom or telcom equipment rooms, to establish a link between ports in the same room or even in the same cabinet without having to convert to an optical signal and back again to an electrical signal. A multi-conductor electrical cable extends between a pair of copper transceivers, and is soldered at each end thereof directly to the printed circuit board within each of the copper transceivers. Each copper transceiver housing has the size and features of a typical SFP transceiver housing; however, since the electrical cable is permanently fixed within each housing, the typical bail latching mechanism, requiring approximately 90° of rotation is not suitable.
An object of the present invention is to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art by providing a relatively simple rotating delatching mechanism requiring only a relatively small amount of rotation for delatching a transceiver's latch from a host cage's latch.